The service marketing triangle involves external marketing, internal marketing, and interactive marketing. External marketing involves promoting the service to end-users, internal marketing involves training employees to effectively deliver the service, and interactive marketing refers to the crucial service encounter between employees and customers. The service marketing mix (7Ps) encompasses product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence. Getting each element right is important for marketing a service, as services have unique characteristics such as intangibility and perishability compared to products. People are especially important as customers directly interact with employees during service delivery.

1. SERVICE MARKETING TRIANGLE
Service marketing triangle involves 3 types of marketing:
1. EXTERNAL MARKETING
2. INTERNAL MARKETING
3. INTERACTIVE MARKETING
1. External Marketing: "Setting the Promise"
· Marketing to END-USERS.
· Involves pricing strategy, promotional activities, and all communication with
customers.
· Performed to capture the attention of the market, and arouse interest in the service.
2. Internal Marketing: "Enabling the Promise"
· Marketing to EMPLOYEES.
· Involves training, motivational, and teamwork programs, and all communication
with
employees.
· Performed to enable employees to perform the service effectively, and keep up the
promise made to the customer.
3. Interactive Marketing: (Moment of Truth, Service Encounter)
· this refers to the decisive moment of interaction between the front-office employees
and customers, i.e. delivery of service.
· This step is of utmost importance, because if the employee falters at this level, all
prior
efforts made towards establishing a relationship with the customer, would be wasted.

2. SERVICE MARKETING MIX (7PS)
Product: The term “product” used to describe either a manufactured good or service.
Service products refer to an activity or benefit that a service provider offers to
perform for customers. A product in service marketing mix is intangible in nature.
Service product can not be measured as well as they are heterogeneous, perishable
and can not be owned.
Price: Pricing is one of the P’s in the marketing mix which has received much
less attention in service firms. Pricing of services is tougher than pricing of goods.
Thus, service marketers must set prices that target customers are willing and able
to pay. Almost every service has its own price terminology, unlike in
manufactured goods where price is not varied enough for different product items
and market segments.
Place: Place in case of services determine where the service product is going to
be located. Services must be created and sold at the same time, since service
delivery is concurrent with its production and cannot be stored or transported.
Promotion: Services are easy to be duplicated therefore promotions are becoming
a critical aspect in the service marketing mix. The promotion element of the
services marketing mix forms a important role in communicating the positioning
of the service to customers. Promotion provides significance to services by adding
tangibility to service and help the customer make a better evaluation of the
service.
People: People are an essential ingredient in service provision; recruiting and training the
right staff is required to create a competitive advantage. Customers make judgments
about service provision and delivery based on the people representing your organization.
This is because people are one of the few elements of the service that customers can see
and interact with. The praise received by the volunteers (games makers) for the London
2012 Olympics and Paralympics demonstrates the powerful effect people can create
during service delivery.
Staff require appropriate interpersonal skills, aptititude, and service knowledge in order
to deliver a quality service. In the UK many organizations apply for the "Investors in
People" Accreditation to demonstrate that they train their staff to prescribed standards
and best practices.
Process: This element of the marketing mix looks at the systems used to deliver the
service. Imagine you walk into Burger shop and order a Whopper Meal and you get it
delivered within 2 minutes. What was the process that allowed you to obtain an efficient
service delivery? Banks that send out Credit Cards automatically when their customer’s
old one has expired again require an efficient process to identify expiry dates and

3. renewal. An efficient service that replaces old credit cards will foster consumer loyalty
and confidence in the company. All services need to be underpinned by clearly defined
and efficient processes. This will avoid confusion and promote a consistent service. In
other words processes mean that everybody knows what to do and how to do it.
Physical Evidence (Physical Environment)
Physical evidence is about where the service is being delivered from. It is particularly
relevant to retailers operating out of shops. This element of the marketing mix will
distinguish a company from its competitors. Physical evidence can be used to charge a
premium price for a service and establish a positive experience. For example all hotels
provide a bed to sleep on but one of the things affecting the price charged, is the
condition of the room (physical evidence) holding the bed. Customers will make
judgments about the organisation based on the physical evidence. For example if you
walk into a restaurant you expect a clean and friendly environment, if the restaurant is
smelly or dirty, customers are likely to walk out. This is before they have even received
the service.
Summary
The Service Marketing Mix involves Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process
and Physical Evidence. Firms marketing a service need to get each of these elements
correct. The marketing mix for a service has additional elements because the
characteristics of a service are different to the characteristics of a product.
The Characteristics of a service are:
(1) Lack of ownership
(2) Intangibility
(3) Inseparability
(4) Perishability
(5) Heterogeneity.
To certain extent managing services are more complicated then managing products,
products can be standardized, to standardize a service is more difficult as there it can be
affected by factors outside the service providers control.